Commentary

Why biometric verification is poised to revolutionize customer service

Chris McGugan, senior vice president, solutions and technology at Avaya, shares insight on the value of voice biometric analytics and biometric verification in delivering a personalized customer experience.

Photo by iStock.com

March 26, 2019

By Chris McGugan, senior vice president, solutions and technology, Avaya

A high level of customer experience maturity is one of the most important contributing factors toward organizational and revenue growth, and for ensuring a solid advantage over industry competitors.

Comprising the sum of all interactions, reactions, and transactions, customer experience is all about how a consumer perceives and ultimately rates the service or product being delivered. A multitude of vendors to choose from gives more opportunity than ever before for customers to walk away if unsatisfied with their experience. As companies face this growing challenge to build and maintain customer loyalty, it's imperative to value every interaction, no matter how small, to build a competitive advantage that lasts.

In order to achieve this, it is essential companies invest in technologies delivering personalized services that empower customers with autonomy, and enable businesses to better serve how, when, and where these customers choose to engage with them. Moreover, it's important to recognize and celebrate individual consumers for who they are and how they want to engage with you.

In 2019, we'll see contact centers begin leveraging smartphone biometrics to streamline interactions with customers and deliver solutions that are sure to satisfy. When combined with artificial intelligence, biometrics allow agents to access immediate context on where a customer is in the customer service journey through instant verification of customer information. This includes identifying general information such as birth date, full name, rewards numbers, frequently used payment options, and much more. Cutting to the chase like this eliminates the need for numerous security question and answer interactions, thus resulting in faster transactions and happier customers.

Often, customers become frustrated with contact centers when having to restate their problem to multiple agents before any resolution is found. Starting on live chat, moving to voice chat, and escalating to manager are three instances of this iteration. By the time the customer speaks to a manger they're irritated, and the manager is in a tight spot to solve the query and keep the customer engaged. In this instance the business is at risk of losing the customer to another vendor who may have better customer service practices in place.

In a real-life application, biometrics and AI technology are demonstrated through Amazon's virtual personal assistant Alexa. Alexa can detect voice, verify users, and learn from consumer choices. This allows someone to order the exact product they want, with the payment method they want, to their typical address, all in a few words ("Alexa, order me lightbulbs on Amazon.com.") Call centers can use this technology in a similar way. When a customer service inquiry is made, such as cancelling a credit card or reporting an order issue, the hassle of repeating personal information out loud is eliminated.

Both iOS and Android are adding advanced location capabilities which will complement biometrics in the near future. Speech recognition technology detects tone of voice and emotion that will improve customer satisfaction as well as increase productivity of transactions. Real-time translation technology is also being integrated into contact centers, allowing agents to carry out quicker interactions and, in turn, reduce customer frustration. For instance, a French-speaking customer can be translated in real-time, eliminating the need for an agent to transfer the customer to a native speaker, and allowing contact centers to serve customers from different locations.

Another benefit of voice biometric analytics is as an emotion detector, enabling companies to discern the validity of a user's request as being influenced by stress or emotional status. This application can be utilized to provide agents with real-time suggestions to solve conflicts, and provides an option to escalate the call to a manager to solve the issue if necessary.

By employing biometric verification in contact centers, customers can expect to receive a more efficient and personalized service, while agents will have a streamlined workload. The businesses that can leverage contact centers with these capabilities will have much to gain in terms of customer satisfaction, and retention, as every experience matters, and a bad one can speak much louder than a positive one.